Integrating Southern Perspectives

How migration relates to the imperial mode of living, degrowth and new internationalism

We are currently facing the most severe migration crisis in history. But this is only one dimension of a broader civilizational crisis. Thus, anti-racist movements should not focus solely on issues of human mobility rights, but also build new paths of solidarity with societies in the geopolitical Global South. A new perspective on internationalism is necessary, where people of the North and the South co-operate to overcome the current colonial division of nature and labor, as well as what has been called the imperial mode of living. In this sense, it is important to question the dominant notions of what it means to live a good life, to think global when it comes to social welfare and to link up with movements such as eco-feminism or degrowth. Doing so could open up new possibilities to address fears of social relegation due to immigration, as they exist in the Global North. In Germany today, the debate how to tackle the root causes of migration, including forced migration, happens mainly between established political actors such as political parties, state institutions and large international NGOs. This debate focuses on wars, catastrophes, arms trade and terror, which are all discursively framed as a state of emergency. From this perspective, practical solutions are not easy to achieve or simply do not correspond to the interests of the said actors. In consequence, these actors propose „development aid“ as the panacea to address root causes of migration. However, this aid is tied to bilateral agreements with Arabic or African countries to prevent migration from occuring in the first place, or deport migrants from Europe. Left-leaning critical migration researchers rightly critique this approach for misusing development co-operation as a tool for migration management.

It is urgent to fight the accelerated destruction of livelihoods in the Global South

A focus on critiquing the mainstream-discourse easily leads to an equally politically problematic counter-stance, which is an attitude that principally welcomes migration as something positive without questioning its root causes or the living conditions in the Global South. However, can migration be something principally unproblematic that is to be welcomed and even increased? Does a defense of the right to migrate necessarily lead us to ignore the manifold coercions that force people to migrate? Must we not, on the contrary, acknowledge the real-life scenarios in the geopolitical Global South and our historical, economic and political contribution to these? Today, a counter-hegemonic project must necessarily result from a collective construction process between the global North and South, which understands their interdependencies. Of course we have to object when governmental institutions differentiate between „good“ or “rightful” refugees on the one hand, and „bad“ refugees on the other hand. However, this should not lead us to ignore global power relations or to paint a naive and euphemistic picture of migration as phenomenon which has principally positive connotations with decisiveness and self-determination. Rather, we should focus on critiquing the international division of labor, or more specifically the exploitation of nature and cheap labor in the Global South to ensure unlimited consumption options in the North. The decision of a German who prefers to live in the USA is radically different from that of a Nigerian who faces the dangers associated with fleeing and entering the EU undocumented. At the end of 2015, over 65 million persons were displaced globally – a historical record. In the light of this situation, it is just as urgent to fight the accelerated destruction of livelihoods in the Global South, as it is to fight for open borders and dignified living conditions for those who have already fled. Because of the continued global colonial division of labor and nature (generally understood as ‘resources’), the geopolitical South is struggling within the context of "accumulation by dispossession" as the Marxist geographer David Harvey put it, to satisfy the demand for commodities of the North and new middle and upper classes in some southern countries. This greed for raw materials has led to a massive expansion and acceleration of extractivism: the export of oil, minerals or cash crops is often the only possibility for Southern economies to integrate themselves into the existing world market. As the reports of several human rights organizations show, these processes destroy the material conditions necessary for the lives of increasing numbers of people. They are forced to migrate, and are dispossessed of their social bonds and cultural contexts. The so-called ‘green economy’, often mentioned as a ‘clean’ solution to combine ecological concerns with economic growth – for example wind or solar energy production or electric cars - also requires resources such as rare minerals, cobalt, lithium or copper, whose exploitation leads to strong social-ecological conflicts elsewhere. At the same time, the globalized world market ensures that the production chains, the power relations and their effects that are inscribed in all consumer goods, remain abstract or are systematically obscured. However, those global value chains and power relations constitute a causal link between the imperial mode of living in the geopolitical North and the root causes for flight and migration in the South. In most cases, migration is not a freely-chosen emancipated decision, but a reaction to a specific concurrence of constraints, for example capitalist, gender-specific, ecological and/or (neo)colonial ones. Many of those people who play cat and mouse with the European border-regime today would rather have stayed in their own cultural and socio-economic contexts, if this had been a viable option.

Who has the right to the imperial mode of living?

The term imperial mode of living coined by Ulrich Brand and Markus Wissen does not seek to describe a certain lifestyle practiced by specific social milieus, but rather refers to the hegemonic patterns of production, distribution and consumption in combination with related cultural imaginaries and subjectivities. These are deeply embedded in the day-to-day practices of the majorities in the global North and increasingly find their ways into the upper and middle classes of countries in the global South. This mode of living is imperial insofar as it assumes unlimited access to all resources - the space, cheap labor and sinks of the entire planet - only for a small and privileged minority of the World society. This mode of living is only possible while such unlimited access is secured either by political and judicial means, or by military means and violence. This imperial mode of living connects the geopolitical North and South insofar as it represents their shared hegemonic ideal of a successful and good life under current capitalist conditions, an ideal closely related to the promise of ‘catch-up development’. But at the same time, it divides the North from the South, because the prosperity of the former is historically rooted in the exploitation of the living environments and (often unpaid) workforce of the latter. Considering this background, what does it mean to claim open borders and global mobility? Does it translate into the right for every human to participate in this mode of living, including those from the global South, if necessary via migration? This is impossible for two reasons: firstly, while the multidimensional ecological crisis is already threatening the material conditions for the reproduction of life on our planet, the ecological destruction necessary to sustain this mode of living would be intensified. Secondly, because the imperial mode of living always requires an ‘elsewhere’, a foreign space to where exploitation and destruction can be externalized. But when applied to everybody, such an ’elsewhere’ would no longer exist. Without a doubt, many migrants indeed come to Europe hoping to participate in the imperial mode of living, which in most cases reveals to be an illusion, due to the manifold mechanisms of a „selective inclusion“ in place. However, the real question should be: do they, do we, or does anybody at all have the right to a mode of living that exploits and destroys the livelihoods of other people?

New perceptions of the good life

A critical left perspective on refugees and migration that takes the solidarity with the global South urgently requires a comprehensive paradigm-shift. The hegemonic discourse on what is considered a good and successful life is based on a number of problematic assumptions: that life as it is today in the Western World represents the highest stage of development of human civilization, that modifying it would necessarily constitute a loss; that happiness inevitably relies on mass consumption and the accumulation of material goods; that on the linear path of history, other modes of living that are less permeated by capitalist logics and based on different world views are necessarily inferior, backward and underdeveloped; that the advancement of technology is only possible via multinational corporations; that it is the state which has to provide social welfare in a centralized manner; and that – as the idea of socialism in the 20th century suggested – one single, universally applicable master plan is needed before we can initiate change. In my opinion, the key lies in the connection between anti-racist struggles for the right to migrate and struggles for a different, less alienated, less accelerated and individualized life. Such struggles do exist in Europe and the geopolitical North and have gained strength over recent years. Struggles such as the degrowth movement or ecofeminism undermine the basis of chauvinist feelings of ‘entitlement’ to prosperity and of widespread fears of being socially deprived by the presence of migrants or refugees, insofar as these struggles fundamentally call into question that the western, European way of life equals prosperity or a good life. As Veronika Bennholdt-Thomsen puts it, “we inhabitants of the northern hemisphere are materially well-supplied or even over-supplied, but nevertheless we experience needs. The big problems of our times are individualistic isolation, loneliness and existential fears, as well as the recourse to racist, nationalist patterns of conviviality as we lack of emancipatory concepts.” Movements such as degrowth and ecofeminism tackle consumption patterns of the imperial mode of living in their everyday dimension, thus opening up possibilities of active transformation for people in the geopolitical global North. These movements make it possible to collectively experience that ways of life which require less material consumption do not necessarily mean a loss, but can give rise to genuine enrichment. It is not my intention to deny that our reproduction and the fulfillment of our needs do have a material dimension. Rather, this material dimension a) does not necessarily have to be governed exclusively by money – see for example the debate and practice around commons and commonism – and b) is not the only dimension there is to poverty and wealth. Notions of abundance, value and wealth related to quality of relationships, self-determination, self-reliance, the ability to redistribute, the experience of true meaning in life and the effective power to act are systematically made invisible by the poverty indicators which dominate the development discourse: quality of life is reduced to money, consumption and, at best, access to public services. The Buen Vivir (living well) - if it is developed from the bottom up and, above all, in democratic ways - will inevitably have different shapes in different contexts. This is why emancipatory debates in Latin America increasingly speak of los buenos vivires in plural. Movements such as degrowth or commonism can connect with struggles around post-extractivism and post-development in the global South, opening up a perspective through which people in the geopolitical North and South can work together to overcome the hegemony of the imperial mode of living. These approaches also take on responsibility for challenging imperial day-to-day practices and can directly and simultaneously address the root causes of forced migration, often caused by compensatory mass-consumption elsewhere, and the roots of the global ecological crisis.

Considering social welfare globally

Finally, what about the alleged threat that migration poses to the welfare state? If we are consequently striving for social equity, we can only consider welfare or social security in a truly global manner. Although this might sound threatening at first, in my opinion nobody has a birth right to certain social benefits. Some of the feminist debates around care and commons are path-breaking here. If it is impossible to globally extend the social welfare state, as it has existed only in a small part of the world, and only for a few decades – on the basis of cheap energy and centuries of previous value transfer from the global South - then we need to replace the utopia of the social welfare state with alternative concepts. The commoning of care might be a possible pathway, while at the same time reducing the hours dedicated to paid labor - without abstaining from the state altogether, which would still need to provide the ideal conditions for this kind of commoning. Consequently, anti-racist movements and critical migration research cannot be content with setting the claim for open borders against the European border regime. As an offensive strategy against racist prosperity-chauvinism, their critiques should just as much focus on the imperial mode of living, the related North-South relationships and hegemonic perceptions of a good life. An up-to-date perspective on inter-peoples-relations should clearly tackle the root causes of forced migration, while at the same time developing new approaches for a global social welfare that are not understanding welfare as a privilege related to one´s dwelling place or birth right.